OT: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Thread - SPOILERS Part Three

[Surrounded By Ahos]

so i think i may have settled on my next series after i finish off the 12 Space Team books...is there an order to reading Discworld?

There are a few schools of thought on this. You can't go wrong with publication order, but other people recommend reading each 'series' in order, depending on what interests you the most.

I read through the first five books in order, then didn't touch it for a decade. I grabbed the first book in the Watch series, plowed through most of that, then read through the whole series over the next year or so.

Both ways have their merits, although I'd probably lean towards reading them in order (just keep in mind that the first few books are wildly different in tone from the rest of the series. It took Terry a little while to find his footing)

 

[ajgoal]

Discworld, not Ringworld. Makes waaay more sense now.

 

[Surrounded By Ahos]

I'm just over 1/3 into Titus Groan, the first of the Gormenghast books, and it's certainly unique. The prose is spectacular, and while nothing much has really happened yet (the only things I'd consider part of the plot are a baby being born, and a kitchen boy climbing around on the rooftops of a castle Dark Souls style) I'm totally enthralled. It's glacially slow. At one point the author spends several paragraphs describing the emotion a character feels in what could be quickly described as her happy place. All the characters seems to range on a scale from unstable to actually insane

Some books you can just blaze through quickly. Titus Groan isn't that. It really demands that you sit down and appreciate it slowly. It's weird, and I love it for that. I'm so glad I've been trying to branch out a bit from the typical fantasy fare.

 

[Surrounded By Ahos]

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the First Annual(?) "SBA's Books I Read This Year" tier list:


S Tier: Books I would consider a foundational part of who I am and will recommend without hesitation:

A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, Tehanu, The Curse of Chalion, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Nation

A Tier: Books I loved:

Raising Steam, The Shepherd's Crown, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, The Sunlit Man, Perdido Street Station, Consider Phlebas, Gideon the Ninth, The Spear Cuts Through Water, Harrow the Ninth, The Library at Mount Char, Nona the Ninth, Red Sister, Grey Sister, Holy Sister, The Scar, Redwall

B Tier: Books I enjoyed:

Tress of the Emerald Sea, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, This Is How You Lose the Time War, The Farthest Shore, The Carpet People, Shards of Earth, The Left Hand of Darkness, Black Company, Ancillary Justice

C Tier: Books I finished:

How High We Go in the Dark, The Shadow of What Was Lost, Wind and Truth (I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, I feel like there's a pretty decent 800 page book that got stuffed into 1300 pages)

D Tier: Books I don't think were worth finishing:


Pawn of Prophecy (I feel like I'm being a bit harsh here, but I was pretty ambivalent on this overall, and the reveal near the end that Barak raped his wife on their wedding night really put me off entirely)

 

[Lord Defect]

Edit the Malazan series to whichever number in the series Dust of Dreams happens to be.
Prairie fire and concrete jungle are more along the lines of the zombie survival guide but for inner city or rural “preppers”
Also add in Mongol Moon’s sequel and a spin off “holiday fever dream short story” from the same author, as well as a parody short story from a different “author”.

I enjoyed the Conan books but man it was also a slog to get through them. The compendium I have of them somehow included a few of the longer stories multiple times, spaced out far enough that it too a little too long to realize that I’ve read it already.

 

[trostol]

good to see MHI on there!!!!

 

[Surrounded By Ahos]

Wrath of the Wendigo is an elite title.

I'm considering starting Malazan soon. I'll hopefully be finished with Titus Groan in the next few days. I may do something lighter in between, though. Titus has been a LOT and from what I understand Malazan is a bit of a dense read as well.